This weekend of awesome was brought to you largely by easy and convenient access to grandparents and a touch more child abandonment than usual.

We got to see two shows! My current faves, Campfire OK and Pickwick at the City Arts Fest in Seattle. Both shows were fantastic, as uzsh. (Those linkies go to super sweet videos, should you be interested.)

Clark and I waved signs for our friend Erik who is running to retain his seat on the Metro Parks board. Clarkie and his fireman’s hat really upped our game and resulted in more honking, I’m sure. (BTW, what LOVELY photos of Erik on that website!)

I had brunch with my Seattle ladies at the incredible Sitka and Spruce. I enjoyed every bite, and the setting is gorgeous. I highly recommend it for locals, or anyone wanting to experience a bit of Portlandia and Colin the chicken. It is defo that sort of place.

Saturday night, my T-Town peeps and I had the great pleasure of dining with an old Tacoma celebrity, whom I shan’t name so that I can write what I want. We bid on Dinner with Said Celebrity at an auction, and of course my peeps, movers and shakers all, were totes down. We arrived at the fancy address, the elevator opened into her palace, and there was a dude there with a silver tray and our first of many drinks. We proceeded to schmooze and enjoy the ridiculous 360 degree view, and then she told us a story of old Tacoma involving the mafia. I was SO EXCITED that this was exactly what I was picturing! Fanciness! Good stories! And then… she disappeared. We were seated for dinner and I whispered to one of the servers, “Is she coming back?” to which he said, ” I don’t think so. I think she’s checking her email.” We had a great time, of course, but uh… I’m not really sure what to think. I assembled a group of young sparkly folks who all work to better Tacoma in some way, and thought we would be great dinner company, but alas. When you are that old and that cool, I guess you do what you want.

SB and I went on to PG to laugh and discuss the evening. It was early still. When we got home, our neighbors were having a party, so we hung out over there until far too late. This evening became, as I’m sure you can tell, another dance with the demon liquor that I regretted horribly the next day, but oh well. I had a good time. Though, occasionally something loud or flamboyant or involving singing resurfaces, and I have to flush it out right away with a violent shake of the head.

Then the next morning, SB went to go collect the child and I got busy prepping for the brunch we hosted for some friends whom we haven’t seen in forever, and rely too heavily on the facebooks to remain connected. It was utterly delightful. Afterwards we went for a walk around the neighborhood, which is my favorite thing to do with Seattleites. I can’t help showing off my Tacoma.

To be a witness to people playing music in a room. All that crazy energy aimed right at you. To move my body and get sweaty. No way I can stand still.

Last weekend I saw three bands in a room with about 100 people and it was HOT and close and loud and OHMYGOODNESS.

My favorites right now are Campfire OK and I would have been happy had the evening held nothing else.

I’ve been super lucky lately to see so many small shows, and really, there’s nothing I’d rather do. On Friday I could reach out my arm in front of me and take a picture of the setlist.

This man can wail.

It was my first time seeing Allen Stone live and it WON’T be my last.

Anyway, I’m addicted. I can’t get enough. It fills me up and washes away the dust.

A new outfit:

a birthday bauble

love from my boss in the form of sweets and flars:

And of course this guy:

Could you just die? I will say his first rendition was a bit peppier than his “forced to repeat for the camera” version.

Anyway, 35 is pretty good so far. I’ve got dinner ressies at my favorite place tonight, and a weekend away with my sweetie ahead. More birthday documentation and navel gazing to come.

Comment number 7 was Sizzle!

E-mailing you now for your address! Huzzah!

It’s fun to have draw-rings! Heads up, lovely readers, next week I’m going to be doing another paid blog post gig and there will be another give-away! I get to draw 10 winners! So if this had been this give away, EVERYONE would have won. So pleaseohplease come back on Monday and enter my contest, ok?

(But first, have you entered my give-away below? There are VERY GOOD ODDS right now.)

We have lovely neighbors. Let’s call them Tom and Don. They keep their house and yard beautifully, they are always bringing us over baked goods and burnt copies of movies, and we’d really like to get to know them better. In the year we’ve lived here, they’ve come to a party of ours once, and we smile and say hello in passing, but that’s all as far as social interaction.

We live in identical, long skinny Victorians, and an important detail in this scenario is that our houses are literally 4 inches apart. There is a skinny sidewalk between them, but the eaves really are 4 inches apart. You could very easily and safely hop from our upstairs hallway into theirs. We’ve joked that we need a special knock or something, in case either of us ever needs to smuggle someone out. (We live on a double lot, so there’s a lots of space on the other side of the house.)

ANYway, they have a cozy little sunroom-type-deal off the back of their house wherein they have a pellet stove. This didn’t happen last winter, but as soon as it got chilly this year, we started occasionally smelling a pretty bad, lighter-fluid-esque smell in our house, It really scared us until we figured out it must be coming from their stove exhaust.

Did they change fuels or something? It didn’t happen last year. My first inclination was to just put up with it. It’s not all the time, and their fireplace must bring them so much joy. It’s not that big of a deal. But then I thought about the fact that bad smells usually = bad chemicals, and I totes don’t want Clark breathing anything toxic.

So what do we do? Inquire about their fuel choice? Demand they make repairs to their exhaust scenario? Call the gas company and get them to be the bad guys? Keep ignoring it? The last thing I want is to have a bad relationship with our 4-inches-away neighbors.

To sum up, what would you do? And if you recommend addressing it, sample dialogues are welcome and expected.

And just for fun, I posted this to the twitters, but if you absolutely HAD to have one of these inflatable monstrosities in your yard, which would you pick?

I anxiously await your replies to both queries.

There were no fabulous birthday plans this year. We’re pretty poor at the moment, but also, this weekend when it would have been logical to have some sort of celebratory gathering, we will be busy with the Grand Cinema’s 72 Hour Film Film Festival! Remember last time we did it?

We won TWO awards! I hope we can do just as well this time. We have more creative folks joining our original team, so I think we’ll be able to come up with something good!

Anywho, all sorts of stuff has been going on. Mainly, though, I’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch. I think I’m definitely on the upswing, but I’ve been super gloomy, angry at the world, and no fun to be around. Logically, I haven’t felt like subjecting any of you to all that.

But today! Today is a good day. It’s nice and sunny. My Mama has my bebeh, so I’m going to go for a good long run, then I’m going to get that birthday mani/pedi I wanted yesterday.

(You know that was empty, right? He’s ACTUALLY drinking out of that manly pink sippy cup.)

I am opposed to gift lists. I feel like if I love you, I know you well enough that I’m capable of buying you something you will like, without you having to place an order for it. I was ranting about this, however, when SB said something like, “I don’t think you’re that good of a gift giver for me. None of them ever blink or beep enough.” Well hmph.

Clark gives awesome open-mouthed slobbery kisses. But about one out of every 10 times he leans in all agape and drooly, he actually bites you instead. This makes it tough to know whether to allow it. I find myself flinching when my baby kisses me. For good reason. I am currently sporting a bloody cheek. He broke the skin this time.

We are all supposed to put a blue light in our windows to show support for law enforcement but NO ONE has any blue light bulbs.

I spent all day yesterday watching the memorial for the four police officers who were murdered 10 days ago. Oh my god, was it ever sad. SAD. The part that killed me the worst was at the end when they did this radio call thing. Whenever my sister stops by on her shift, her radio squawks the entire time. The sound of the dispatchers calling the officers is familiar to me. So when the dispatcher called each officer in turn, then said, “no response,” gahhhhhhhhhhh. Tearing up now thinking about it. After it was all over, my sister called me down to the station to take a photo of her and her unit in their dress uniforms. It felt nice to be able to do something.

Another thing I want to clear up is that none of you reading are the “wrong moms” I referred to in my last post. I guess it just seems like we are all more likely to talk about the struggles than the joys, you know? I’m trying to be better about this. I want other people to have babies! Before we had a baby, most people with children said things like, “You should wait! You have plenty of time.” Maybe this isn’t what they meant, but I took that to mean something like, “Your life is over once you have a kid! It’s terrible raising kids but it’s something we all must do.” But I feel like this is the best thing I’ve ever done. I encourage anyone childless but considering it to get busy.

We just got back from a surprisingly not-awful trip to Ikea. We didn’t get lost, first of all, which for some reason we always do. We either take the wrong exit or get back on one of the two different highways the wrong way, or something else equally dumb. Then we found a parking spot fairly quickly, always a bonus. It was actually much less crowded in there than the parking lot foretold, another bonus. Clark was in a great mood and totally in to looking around at all the prettiness. Right when we were all getting a little grumpy we had mashed potatoes and meatballs, which Clark enjoyed as well. We found everything we went in there for, and after a gift card spent less than $100, which is a huge feat. Mainly we were there to buy a ton of gallery-type frames. We are going to make our new house look like a photographer lives here. SB didn’t even buy any strange fish in a tube or anything else smelly while we were there. A good day, indeed.

Well, friends, aren’t you so glad I’m back? This post is RIVETING. Please entertain me in the comments with your weekend plans, should you feel so inclined. This is the only weekend this month that isn’t crazy busy for us. I think we’re just going to get a Santa picture and that’s it. I hope Clark isn’t traumatized. He really likes beards and glasses, so here’s hoping.

Bonus shot of Clark from Halloween, just cuz. He is a monkey, obviously.

SB was able to get away from work for a little while in the middle of the day, so I got to get away. I got a mani, my first in a million years. Then I went to the mall (I will never again go to the mall without thinking about Robin Sparkles.) where I did one large, efficient, sweep through Macy’s, combing through rack after rack, loading my arms with about 35 shirts. I waited until the attendant was distacted and darted into the 4 garment limit changing room, where I tried on all 35 of them in about 3.5 minutes. (Always returning them properly to their hangers, of course. I worked retail.)

Anyway, there was some shopping. Then I went home and took a nap with Clark. It was very warm and snuggly.

We were about to leave for dinner at my parent’s house when all of a sudden I felt like making people meet us for drinks later. I called my mom and asked her if she would watch Clark. She said yes, though I did notice a weird pause. Then I started sending a text to about 10 people and SB had to tell me to Stop It, Please Ms Cruise Director, that it was already planned, my mom was in, and some pals were already meeting us at The Tempest and there were going to be cupcakes. Nice, eh? He’s a good one.

So then there was dinner at my parent’s house. It was lovely as always to hang out with my parents and sister, my SB, and my baby. I’m so lucky. And then drinks and cupcakes with fun friends.

So. Lucky.

It was a great day! I do plan to do my annual Birthday Goal Post, hopefully tomorrow.